The CCSM Next Leaders programme is taking shape. Can you describe how it works in practice and tell us how far its roll-out has progressed?
CCSM Next Leaders is aimed at Moroccan students in their final year at leading Moroccan and Swiss higher education institutions: engineers, managers, lawyers or economists. These are often academically very well-trained profiles who do not yet have access to the codes, networks and practical trade-offs of the business world.
The programme is based on a one-to-one mentoring relationship lasting six to twelve months between an experienced professional, who is a member of the CCSM, and a student selected together with the partner institutions. The format is deliberately simple: at least one structured session per month, in person or remotely, supplemented by a follow-up logbook as well as a mid-term review and a final review.
We are currently in a foundation phase. The Committee, officially launched in July, is finalising the programme’s tools and preparing the first partnerships with the schools. The aim is to launch a first pilot cycle of around ten mentor-mentee pairs by the end of March, in order to test and refine the scheme before scaling it up.
What exactly is expected of a CCSM member who wishes to become a mentor?
We are not asking CCSM members to become trainers, nor to devote time they do not have. What we are asking of them is one hour a month and the right mindset.
One hour to listen, share and ask questions. Not to solve the mentee’s problems for them, but to offer them what studies alone cannot always provide: the perspective of a professional who has been through real situations, taken decisions and built a career path.
“Mentoring can give professionals a fresh look at their own career path and at the expectations of a new generation.”
The mindset is just as important. A good mentor does not impose their vision: they ask the right questions, share their successes and their difficulties honestly, and enable the mentee to build their own answers.
The benefit is also mutual. Mentoring can give professionals a fresh look at their own career path and at the expectations of a new generation. For member companies, it is also a way of passing on their professional culture and investing for the long term in the ecosystem in which they operate.
A year from now, what will a successful CCSM Next Leaders programme look like?
First of all, concrete stories: a student who dares to seize an opportunity they would not have considered on their own, another who refines or redirects their career plans, or a mentor who wants to continue the experience because it has given them as much as it has given the mentee.
We will also track three indicators: the completion rate of the mentoring journeys, the spontaneous demand from new mentors or institutions wishing to join the programme and, in time, the ability of member companies to recruit former mentees. When the programme creates value tangible enough for the company that provided the training to also become an employer, we will have come full circle.
Success will depend on the quality of the selection, the relevance of the pairings and the rigour of the Committee’s follow-up. Volume is not our first goal: we want to build a benchmark.